Equipping while casting

[Faust]

Please leave this discussion up to intellectual minds that are capable of connecting the dots.

Your post had no relevance to this discussion and simply reiterated previous known concepts that have been posted in this thread along with many others.

Pretty sure Kaivan will conclude the reseach after my last response.

[Kaivan]

I've been away for some time, so I'll have to catch up on this...

Would it be possible that they simply removed the "equip or unequip" restriction on the previous code leaving in the "take" or "drag from backpack" portion of the code to maintain those previous restrictions since arming weapons was no longer possible due to the spellbook restriction?

I don't think that there would be any effect on the overall functionality if they removed the target wiping effect when equipping or unequipping. One thing to recall is that equipping and unequipping still involved using a lift packet at some point, and if lifting an item, say, from your bag, and dropping it to another portion of your bag is indistinguishable from dragging an item from your bag and dropping it to your equipment slot. The act of lifting is the same and would disrupt any targets.

Ignoring the waste of bandwidth one post above and getting back to the real discussion.

With a shield equipped, and the book unequipped you can chug potions,
and use bandages, making you very hard to kill. Not to mention you can
precast somewhat with a shield. For example you can EQUIP THE SHIELD
WHILE CASTING. That is an amazing benefit, because if they do hit and
disrupt you, they usually do 2 to 5 instead of 25.

That's all folks.

This unambiguously tells us that you could, during UOR, equip a shield without disrupting your spell, provided it was cast during the casting animation. Of course we still need information to determine whether you could perform any of the actions that were restricted with the January 2000 patch after the target cursor is up for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

[Faust]

We could amount more evidence but it's starting to look pretty obvious if you ask me.

• Demo - Equip casting existed.
• Post UOR - Equip casting existed.
• Pre UOR Precasting - Equip casting existed.
• UOR Precasting - Equip casting does not exist with a specific clause stating it was removed.

The source doesn't just state that you could precast with a shield but that you could in fact parry the hit reducing damage during the casting animation with the parry mage.

The drag/lift function can differentiate where the item is being dragged/lifted from in game.

[Kaivan]

It can, to an extent, but it requires another assumption to be made on top of the assumptions that we have not yet found supporting evidence for.

As for the information regarding equipping while casting, that information is very clear. It would be interesting to see what information exists for attempting to equip after the target cursor has come up. This can help us understand better understand the mechanics.

[Faust]

What about scrolls?

My pure mage has the following skills: Eval Int, Magery, Meditation,
Resist, Swords, Tactics, Wrestling. Inscription is a good skill to have
for 2 reasons. First, it's a good source of income. Second, you do not
equip your spellbook when casting from a scroll. Very useful for pvp
mages.

If the book was the "preventive measure" to precasting after the UOR publish, don't you think people would have been precasting with scrolls...

[Halbu]

Faust and Kaivan are awesome. I hope to see them around for some time, thanks again for all your hard work! It's made this the most fun server to pvp on by far.

[Kaivan]

I find that particular statement to be extremely suspect due to its direct conflict with the patch notes. The patch notes are very clear that casting any spell will equip your spellbook if it is not currently equipped, and that any movement of that spellbook would disrupt the casting process. Without a lot of corroborating evidence, this player's statements carry little weight.

Also, regarding the pre-casting prevention measures, we can rule out the possibility that lifting while unequipping did not trigger a disruption to the spell target. This functionality specifically notes disarming via wrestling as a way of disrupting, which does exactly that.

[Faust]

Ok, so until evidence can be produced it's pretty much that we have to go under the assumption that the pre-casting removal patch changes were removed and that you could drag/lift/equip items with a spell target cursor Post-UOR... please correct me if I am wrong? However, despite this assumption it really doesn't matter in the end because we are not debating UOR mechanics and the mechanic that is being discussed is the equip casting feature.

We have a source to suggest that equipping during the casting animation was possible in the Fall of 2000 now.

Clarification:
1998 - 2000 - 2001

Sources exist from those dates essentially implying the ability that you could equip cast.

[Kaivan]

I don't think that we should operate under any assumption regarding the exact mechanics for UOR at the moment.

As for the evidence showing that you could equip a shield during the casting animation, this information is not at odds with any patch note, nor is it at odds with what we know from the demo, and thus it lines up with current evidence regarding the ability to arm an item during the casting animation.

[Faust]

[hectorc2w]

I don't think that we should operate under any assumption regarding the exact mechanics for UOR at the moment.

As for the evidence showing that you could equip a shield during the casting animation, this information is not at odds with any patch note, nor is it at odds with what we know from the demo, and thus it lines up with current evidence regarding the ability to arm an item during the casting animation.

...exept that about everyone remembers not being able to do so in 99.

I remember how amazing it was that you could equip a shield during the casting animation. I made a turtle mage for that exact reason. It was so different than pre uo:r where equipping would disrupt your spell.

there is something we are missing somewhere. Equip casting and the hally cycle is all wrong. Yet noone seems to be able to find evidence to fix it.

it sucks.

[Faust]

Highly unlikely that was ever the case Hector.

The information presented today increased the mounting evidence towards the equip casting mechanic.

Take a look at the timeline...

• 1998 May/June - Equip casting existed.
• 2000 Sept/Oct - Equip casting existed.
• 2001 July - Equip casting existed and finally modified in the final patch with a clause stating it specificly.

We would be talking about two phantom patches that would have removed it after mid 1998 and added it back in before the UOR publish. That sort of notion is starting to seem more absurd after shrinking the timeline by an entire year now. This leaves us with another question that would seem to be even more absurd in my opinion.

Why would EA remove "equip casting" after mid 1998 and re-add it?

Simply does not make any sense and it's clearly unlikely that this was ever the case to begin with.


There are people that still try to argue that spell interruption wasn't based on damage and disrupted upon being hit every single time. This is definitely not true and has been proven to be the case. T2A based shards have set many false standards as this and equip casting interrupting spells is probably just another situation to add to that list. Kind of like the equip delay that has existed since 1997 to present day Ultima Online. Recast delays... disrupt delays that never even existed on the production shards.

List of these false mechanics span vastly.

[nightshark]

I've scoured newsgroups and forums for hours trying to find information to support or deny equip casting during era. Except it was very rarely talked about. The best I could find was a couple of people in mid-late '99 saying "cast spell, get cursor, equip", which also proves nothing.

I agree that the mechanic should stay as it is now, as it's the only sensible way to interpret the time line of what we know existed and the patch notes surrounding it. My personal memory doesn't agree with this, but there's just no other evidence out there (or at least, nothing found).

[hectorc2w]

yea i know everything points to it being accurate. but as nightshark said, the memories of a vast majority do not recall being able to do it.


what about the hally cycle timer? is this ever going to get looked into?

[Faust]

Kaivan and I have already developed a combat timer that looks very promising. We are just waiting for Derrick to review the code/algorithm and compare it to what he already has that we know is not right. The current system has multiple problems that are already known to be inaccurate such as not holding swings and the swing advancing during movement. These are known bugs to Derrick.

One key difference with this new algorithm is that weapon cycles would be possible in the same timespan as they are now but stretched further in between by one whole second. This would mean the DPS would be much lower and cycling would be much slower in between occurrences.

Roughly go from a 2.5 second average to a 3.5 seconds average.

Probably a little more difficult to pull off as well since movement stalls swing advancement and swings should not be holding.

Also, based on this aglorithm/code it would not be beneficial to equip during the casting of the spell in most cases since it would trigger the equip/arm delay resetting your combat timer to the beginning.